[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Hadrian Tyrael S. Aventine:
My concern is what if they can't move it away from the hurricane in time.

A project like that is going to be measured in the hundreds of trillions price tag and with gov't buying, they'll make 2 and 3x the price.

I also think they will come up with a self-clibing mechanism to pull stuff up. Sure it's slower, but we can slap an italian sticker on it and say it's romantic.

The estimates on the website are in the tens of billions actually. The main hurdle is designing the ribbon itself. Once that is done and the system is up and running, it could very easily pay for itself in a short time.

Well the ground unit can be placed in areas of historically low storm activity. And it can be moved to an extent, if the ground station is a mobile one. I would imagine that in the event of a particularly nasty storm, the cable could simply be disconnected and "Reeled up" out of danger. The ground station would just need to batten down and ride it out then.

Geoschmo